A sultry September afternoon in the stuffy insides of a familiar yellow-black mobile enclosure... I rolled down the glass and gave it (whole and unopened) to her...

She suddenly looked at me in the eye and asked, 'Taaza hain?'(Is it fresh?). Her disbelief was evident when I nodded indicating that it was. She must have thought I was lying. (I wonder that she wondered that I was giving it to her only because it was stale. Perhaps it was me who wondered more than her - she was always use to the leftovers and the stale fragments)

I could not return my gaze back to her. It struck a chord somewhere - deep within. My jaws dropped and I found myself staring at the broken button on her forlorn dress. I wanted to run away to some place far away. I felt so guilty for all the times that I had cribbed at the dining table. I could hear the mad confab of the traffic, blaring to its highest intensity. It wasn't even two seconds before the traffic lights had gyrated to an office green that the pandemonium broke out on the queens necklace in the commercial capital of India. Nothing unusual, just the customary traffic.